1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a damper device (damper apparatus) which is provided on a liquid jetting apparatus, such as an ink jet printing apparatus, at an intermediate portion of a channel through which a liquid is supplied to a jetting head of the liquid jetting apparatus, and which reduces a pressure fluctuation in the liquid; a damper unit; a liquid jetting apparatus provided with the damper device; and a method of manufacturing damper device.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a printing apparatus of an ink jet type which is an example of a liquid jetting apparatus, a printing apparatus has been hitherto known having a structure in which an ink is supplied to a jetting head, which reciprocates while facing a recording paper, from an ink cartridge provided in a body of the apparatus (apparatus body), via a flexible ink supply tube (a so-called tube-supply type). In this printing apparatus, since inertial force acts on the ink inside the ink supply tube accompanied by the reciprocating movement of the jetting head, there is a possibility that a meniscus formed in a nozzle hole of the jetting head might not be maintained appropriately due to a pressure wave caused by the inertial force. Therefore, a damper device which is capable of changing the volume thereof by the pressure of the ink is arranged inside a carriage on which the jetting head is provided or mounted, at an intermediate portion of an ink supply channel arriving at the jetting head so as to attenuate the pressure wave acting on the ink at the damper unit.
On the other hand, in response to the demand in the recent years to make the printing apparatus be small or compact, there is a need to make the carriage etc. on which a jetting head is attached or mounted to have a small size. To respond to such a need, there is proposed a three-dimensional damper device for realizing a further small-sized damper device (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-245484). In this damper device, a bag-shaped (pouch-shaped) elastic deformation member which temporarily stores an ink in the inside thereof is provided in a state that the elastic deformation member is attached to a substrate for each color ink, and this bag-shaped elastic deformation member is deformed three dimensionally based on the pressure of the ink.
However, in a case of this three-dimensional damper device, the shape of an opening of the bag-shaped elastic deformation member, at which the elastic deformation member is connected to the substrate, is limited (restricted) to a circular shape, and with the opening having the circular shape, it is difficult to realize a small-sized three-dimensional damper device as a whole, or it is difficult to realize a layout of ink supply channels to be connected to a plurality of pieces of the bag-shaped elastic deformation member for the inks of various colors respectively.
In other words, when the plurality of bag-shaped elastic deformation members are arranged in a row according to the color inks respectively, the dimension in a direction of arrangement becomes large (substantial) because a connecting portion between each of the bag-shaped elastic deformation members and the substrate is circular. On the other hand, it is possible to realize the small sizing by arranging the plurality of bag-shaped elastic deformation members in a matrix form with respect to the substrate. In this case, however, the layout becomes complicated as ink supply channels which are connected to the bag-shaped elastic deformation members intersect with each other.
Further, the bag-shaped elastic deformation member is a pre-produced molding product, and there are strict limitations on the outer shape and thickness thereof. Therefore, a method of manufacturing the bag-shaped elastic deformation member is not easy, and it is also not easy to secure characteristics (deformation characteristics with respect to the pressure) of each damper to be provided for each of the color inks, stably and at low cost.